5 Great Movies That Sat On A Hollywood Shelf For Silly Reasons

Hollywood has many more ideas for movies then they have time to make them, which is why many ideas sit in development hell for years. Sometimes, however, ideas are ready to release and sit on a shelf anyway. Often this happens because somebody along the way realizes the movie isn't very good, and so they wait for the right time to dump it, and try to make some portion of the investment back at a time when it will do the least damage.

Sometimes, however, the movie is actually pretty good and the reason that the movie sat around is ridiculous. Here are a few times that good movies sat around with nobody to watch them.

Cabin in the Woods

How Long it Was Delayed: 2 years

Why?Cabin in the Woods is one of the more recent, and popular, examples of a movie that sat on a shelf ignored. Chris Hemsworth was mostly unknown when he made it, but by the time the movie was released, he was Thor. The main reason that this one sat around is that MGM, who originally owned the film, went through a change of leadership, after very nearly going bankrupt, and the new bosses just didn't want anything to do with movies that the old bosses had been responsible for. Thus, this one sat around until MGM could offload it to a different studio, which took some time.